Three Things About Elsie(34)

Elsie and I looked at the telegram on the mantelpiece, and just for a moment, I saw things through her mother’s eyes.

After a while, we stopped going downstairs when Ronnie was in the house. We sat in Elsie’s room instead, and listened. Because all of Ronnie’s conversation seemed to find its way out when he was alone with Beryl. We could hear an army of words, marching through the floorboards. He’d pick at what she was wearing or how she spoke. Any little detail he’d decided was getting on his nerves that day. Beryl’s voice danced around the edges, but every so often, the snap of his was louder and Beryl became very silent.

One morning, she came to the kitchen table with a black eye.

Everyone fussed around her. They poked and prodded, and tried to prise the lid off a conversation, but the only thing she would say was, ‘I tripped.’

And for someone who never stopped talking, she started to say nothing at all.

Jack watched the floor, the whole time I was talking. His gaze didn’t leave. I wondered how many sadnesses he’d witnessed, yet there was still room in his eyes for a little more.

‘He made their mother worse as well,’ I said and glanced at Elsie. ‘Feeding her mind about all sorts. He said the government were listening in on people, encouraged her to tear at the wallpaper to look for microphones. I caught him once, pointing out which walls she hadn’t checked.’

Once I found the first story, I realised there were so many more, and I couldn’t stop them spilling out. Ronnie hit Beryl all the time. It became a routine. And like most routines, she eventually seemed to accept it. She would appear most days with a black eye or a bloodied lip, and fold her face into her sleeve to make it unseen.

So many women at the factory arrived at work exactly the same. No one thought anything of it. The bruises drifted from black to purple, green to yellow, without a word being said. It was like wearing a different headscarf or a new pair of gloves. Then one morning, ownership would be renewed, and they changed back to black.

‘The bruises weren’t the worst thing,’ I said. ‘The worst thing was waiting for them to happen.’

We all tried to talk to Beryl. Even Dot came up for the day and did her very best, but love paper-aeroplanes where it pleases. I have found that it settles in the most unlikely of places, and once it has, you’re left with the burden of where it has landed for the rest of your life.

‘It went on for months,’ I said. ‘No one could stop it.’

Even their mother tried. Their mother, whose world had become so small, it rarely reached further than the corners of her eiderdown. Ronnie walked through the door one evening, a cigarette fashioned to his bottom lip, and Elsie’s mother took the letter rack and threw it at his face. The telegram twisted and turned on its journey to the floor.

‘She needs locking up, your mother,’ said Ronnie. He wiped the blood from his mouth afterwards. ‘She needs to be in a funny farm. I’ve a good mind to report her.’

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Elsie said, but he just smiled at her.

His face wouldn’t stop bleeding, and his mouth gaped at the corner, the flesh hanging by a thread.

‘He needs to go to hospital,’ I said. ‘He needs an X-ray. And stitches.’

I could hear the clock eat away at the seconds.

No one spoke.

‘My father will take him,’ I said.

When they returned, my father said Ronnie was ‘an unusual young man’, which was probably the closest he ever came to a direct criticism.

Ronnie lost a tooth. And gained a scar. Right in the corner of his mouth, where it disappeared each time he smiled.

Jack still gazed at the floor.

I started to fold a newspaper someone had left on the seat, because all of a sudden, it felt as though I had a lot of energy and nowhere to put it.

Elsie said, ‘We all tried our best, Florence. Everyone did. She just wouldn’t listen.’

Backwards and forwards the newspaper went, trying to find sense in my thoughts. ‘We should have done more to stop him.’

‘It wasn’t your job, Florence,’ Elsie said. ‘It wasn’t your job to stop him.’

‘If something upsets you, it upsets me. Even Beryl. I was part of your piano keyboard, remember? I was Favour. You said so.’

I think I must have been shouting again, because Jack and Elsie both made a very big thing of looking around to see if anyone had heard.

‘That night never should have happened. It never should have been allowed to happen.’ My voice filled the courtyard.

‘What night?’ said Jack. ‘What happened?’

My hands stopped turning.

It felt like reaching for something that had rolled under a settee. Something that brushed at your fingertips, but was always just out of reach.

I stared at him.

‘I can’t remember,’ I whispered. ‘It’s gone.’

I turned to Elsie and she looked back at me.

‘Where do they go,’ I said, ‘the words? What happens to them?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

The newspaper was still in my hands. All those headlines. Weather forecasts. Adverts. People telling you this and that, and the other. All those words.

I looked back at Elsie. I needed her to find the story for me.

‘It’s not my story to tell, Flo,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t there.’